eek: epizygides], are put in their places in the
boxes.

2. Next, the loops of the strings are put through the holes in the
capitals, and passed through to the other side; next, they are put upon
the windlasses, and wound round them in order that the strings,
stretched out taut on them by means of the handspikes, on being struck
by the hand, may respond with the same sound on both sides. Then they
are wedged tightly into the holes so that they cannot slacken. So, in
the same manner, they are passed through to the other side, and
stretched taut on the windlasses by means of the handspikes until they
give the same sound. Thus with tight wedging, catapults are tuned to the
proper pitch by musical sense of hearing.

On these things I have said what I could. There is left for me, in the
matter of sieges, to explain how generals can win victories and cities
be defended, by means of machinery.

CHAPTER XIII

SIEGE MACHINES

1. It is related that the battering ram for sieges was originally
invented as follows. The Carthaginians pitched their camp for the siege
of Cadiz. They captured an outwork and attempted to destroy it. But
having no iron implements for its destruction, they took a beam, and,
raising it with their hands, and driving the end of it repeatedly
against the top of the wall, they threw down the top courses of stones,
and thus, step by step in regular order, they demolished the entire
redoubt.

2. Afterwards a carpenter from Tyre, Bright by name and by nature, was
led by this invention into setting up a mast from which he hung another
crosswise like a steelyard, and so, by swinging it vigorously to and
fro, he threw down the wall of Cadiz. Geras of Chalcedon was the first
to make a wooden platform with wheels under it, upon which he
constructed a framework of uprights and crosspieces, and within it he
hung the ram, and covered it with oxhide for the better protection of
the men who were stationed in the machine to batter the wall. As the
machine made but slow progress, he first gave it the name of the
tortoise of the ram.

3. These were the first steps then taken towards that kind of machinery,
but afterwards, when Philip, the son of Amyntas, was besieging
Byzantium, it was developed in many varieties and made handier by
Polyidus the Thessalian. His pupils were Diades and Charias, who served
with Alexander. Diades shows in his writings that he invented moveable
towers, which he used also to take a